WBFO Disabilities Beat

This week, we share an interview with two business leaders from the Deaf community in France who were part of the IVLP trip to Buffalo. Noémie Churlet is the founder and CEO of Médiapi, an organization that provides news and education that is accessible to the Deaf community. WBFO's Emyle Watkins and Churlet discuss media accessibility and educational opportunities for Deaf people.

Recently, Buffalo hosted leaders from the Deaf community in France as part of the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) through the US Department of State. Among them was a notable figure in the French disability rights movement: Jérémie Boroy. Boroy serves as the advisor to the Mayor of Paris on people with disabilities and is the chairperson of the National Advisory Council for Persons with Disabilities (Conseil national consultatif des personnes handicapées). Boroy, who is deaf, has also had a hand in the creation and revision of French disability rights laws. WBFO's Disabilities Beat Reporter Emyle Watkins sat down with Boroy during his visit to hear his thoughts on what our two countries could learn from each other in terms of disability rights and equity for deaf people.

In New York, hundreds of organizations administer the Medicaid-funded Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program - or CDPAP. This program allows people with disabilities to hire their own personal care aids, who are paid through these organizations, which are considered fiscal intermediaries, or FIs. But in a last minute curve-ball, the state included a move to a single FI in their state budget.

Post-eclipse it seems like most people talked about their visual experience on April 8th. However, across the country, many people experienced the eclipse though a sonification, or a conversion of the light of the sun into sound. WBFO Disability Reporter Emyle Watkins visited Buffalo State on eclipse day to hear how they were using a LightSound device to make the eclipse audibly accessible. Watkins speaks with Dr. Jen Connelly, a disabled astronomer and the associate director of Buffalo State’s planetarium about not only how they made this happen, but why they need more resources like this. Meanwhile, WBFO Reporter Alex Simone took the device with him to a park in Erie County to capture a recording.

April is Autism Acceptance Month. While a lot of news this month will focus around what autism is and different programs led by or for people who are autistic, one conversation that isn't had enough is how autistic people experience and navigate grief.

WBFO's Disabilities Beat has been covering how people with disabilities can enjoy the eclipse safely and equitably over the past several months. Below you'll find stories you can read for more advice, listen to for interesting interviews, as well as a compiled list of resources that have been mentioned to us.

Many local organizations have been finding ways to make the eclipse accessible to people with disabilities, and among them is a local volunteer-driven free radio service for people with vision and print disabilties. WBFO's Disability Reporter Emyle Watkins spoke with Michael Benzin from Niagara Frontier Radio Reading Service about how they are using their local radio program to help make the eclipse accessible to people with disabilities.

For students who may be low vision or blind, learning about the eclipse has to include accessible materials, like tactile images. Last week, Reporter Holly Kirkpatrick visited Williamsville Central Schools to speak to Gail Vaughan, the district's teacher for students with vision disabilities and Mark Percy, the district’s planetarium director about the need for more accessible eclipse education materials and how they developed their curriculum.

WBFO’s Disability Reporter Emyle Watkins speaks with Thomas Ess, the Vice President for Emergency Management at People Inc, a disability-services agency in Western New York. We discuss why plain language communication matters, how organizations have adapted existing materials for the people they serve, as well as how the eclipse is changing operations for group homes and programs for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

New York is less than a week away from the deadline for the 2025 state budget. Every year, people with disabilities, their families, and the agencies that serve them watch this date closely, because the results of the budget vote will determine living opportunities for tens of thousands of New Yorkers. This week on the Disabilities Beat, we highlight one family's decades-long story of fighting for their loved one's opportunity to live in his community, which is now threatened due to a workforce crisis that many advocates attribute to underfunding in the state budget.